More than 4.5 million passengers flooded US airports on Friday and Saturday, with a total of 13 million air travelers to, from or within the United States expected to pass by the end of this Fourth of July weekend.
For many of these passengers, however, travel plans have been altered by flight delays and cancellations caused by a boom in travel demand combined with widespread staff shortages. From Friday to Sunday, airlines flying within, to or out of the United States canceled more than 1,400 flights, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, stranding and angering some travelers headed for the long-awaited summer vacation. In addition, more than 14,000 US flights were delayed this holiday weekend, according to the site.
The experience has been frustrating for some passengers on American carriers. On Saturday, 1,048 — or 29 percent — of Southwest Airlines flights were delayed, as were 28 percent of American Airlines flights, according to FlightAware. United Airlines and Delta Air Lines had similar problems, with 21 percent and 19 percent of their flights delayed. On Sunday, the middle of the holiday weekend, commuters appeared to have eased off the worst of the trouble, with roughly three-quarters of the delays and half as many cancellations as the day before.
As of 7 a.m. ET Monday, there were more than 400 delays and 100 canceled flights at U.S. airports.
In a typical month, about 20 percent of flights are delayed or canceled, according to Robert W. Mann Jr., a former airline executive who now runs airline consulting firm RW Mann & Company. But this holiday weekend, he said, it was about 30 percent. “It’s a little worse than usual,” he said.
As airlines face pilot shortages, bad weather and air traffic control delays, some appear to be struggling to cope with passenger volumes approaching or in some cases exceeding pre-pandemic levels. On Friday, the Transportation Security Administration screened more passengers — 2.49 million people — than any other day this year. This surpassed the 2.18 million passengers checked on July 1, 2019, before the pandemic.
Still, travel to and from airports in the United States seemed to go better than in many other parts of the world. On Sunday, airlines delayed about half of all flights departing from Toronto Pearson International Airport, Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and Frankfurt Airport, while about 40 percent of flights from London Heathrow were delayed.
Australian airports were hit hard on Monday, with almost 60 per cent of departing flights from Sydney airport delayed, while Brisbane and Melbourne airports fared much better. SAS, the Scandinavian airline, said on Monday that its pilots’ union had called a strike over pay that would see 50 percent of its flights canceled, affecting around 30,000 passengers a day. The loss-making carrier, which serves as the national airline of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, called the move “devastating.”
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